Ulster's Stand For Union eBook

heard of the gibes of The Irish News, The
Daily News, or The Westminster Gazette at
the “royal progresses” of “King
Carson”; but they would have been in no way upset
by them if they had, for they were far too much in
earnest themselves to pay heed to the cheap sneers
of others. At each one of the September meetings
there was a military setting to the business of the
day. At Enniskillen Carson was conducted by a
cavalry escort to the ground where he was to address
the people; at Coleraine, Portadown, and other places
volunteers lined the route and marched in column to
and from the meeting. They were, it is true,
but “half-baked” levies, with more zeal
than knowledge of military duties. But competent
critics—­and there were many such amongst
the visitors—­praised their bearing and physique
and the creditable measure of discipline they had
already acquired. And it must be remembered that
in September 1912 the Ulster Volunteer Force was still
in its infancy. In the following two years its
improvement in efficiency was very marked; and within
three years of the time when its battalions paraded
before Sir Edward Carson, with dummy rifles, and marched
before him to his meetings in Lisburn, Newtownards,
Enniskillen, and Belfast on the eve of the Covenant,
those same men had gloriously fought against the flower
of the Prussian Army, and many of them had fallen
in the battle of the Somme.

The final meeting in the Ulster Hall on Friday the
27th of September was an impressive climax to the
tour. Many English journalists and other visitors
were present, and some of them admitted that, in spite
of all they had heard of what an Ulster Hall meeting
was like, they were astonished by the soul-stirring
fervour they witnessed, and especially by the wonderful
spectacle presented at the overflow meeting in the
street outside, which was packed as far as the eye
could reach in either direction with upturned faces,
eager to catch the words addressed to them from a
platform erected for the speakers outside an upper
window of the building.[36]

Messages of sympathy and approval at this supreme
moment were read from Mr. Bonar Law and Lord Lansdowne,
Mr. Long, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. Austen Chamberlain.
Then, after brief speeches by four local Belfast men,
one of whom was a representative of Labour, and while
the audience were waiting eagerly for the speech of
their leader, there occurred what The Times
next day described as “two entirely delightful,
and, as far as the crowd was concerned, two entirely
unexpected episodes.” The first was the
presentation to Sir Edward Carson of a faded yellow
silk banner by Colonel Wallace, Grand Master of the
Belfast Orangemen, who explained that it was the identical
banner that had been carried before King William III
at the battle of the Boyne, and was now lent by its
owner, a lineal descendant of the original standard-bearer,
to be carried before Carson to the signing of the
Covenant; the second was the presentation to the leader